We
have opened up our archives at independent transport videos to
give you some real transport gems featuring the trams and trolleybuses of
Europe which has never been seen before.
Using video footage from our own archive, together with cine and video
loaned to us from Bob Webster’s collection, we have put together a programme
covering four European countries from the 1960’s to 2008. It is all shown in it’s original 4:3 screen
format. Quality is dependent on the film
and video cameras of the day – but we believe the contents are the important
element – so sit back and enjoy this time capsule.

AUSTRIA

We
start with cine footage from the 1960’s visiting the trams in Vienna, Linz,
Graz and Gmunden,
with a brief visit to Salzburg to see their trolleybuses.

BELGIUM

From
our own cameras we film the trams in Brussels outside the Central Railway
station. Here we see a number of the
single and articulated PCC cars, some still in the previous livery of cream
with a blue stripe, now superseded by the current yellow and blue colour
scheme.

GERMANY

A
short, but glorious, cine film from Munich starts our visit to Germany. We then move onto Hannover and Bremen with
video footage from Bob’s collection. Our
own cameras then make visits in 1997 and 2007 to the superb tramway museum in
Frankfurt-am-Main. Some more of our own footage taken in 2008 is seen when we
visited Köln. The modern fleet is recorded as well as a Düwag, now
in the service fleet of KVB the tram operator in the city.

NETHERLANDS

We
start our visit to the Netherlands with a visit to Arnhem to see the
trolleybuses in action. The smart two
tone blue vehicles are seen operating in the early 1990’s with footage from
Bob’s collection. Staying with his
collection we move to Den Haag and see the PCC cars in action – all now long
since gone!

Our
final visit is to Rotterdam in 2002. We
start filming at the busy tram station outside the central railway
station. A large number of the trams
seen here have now left the fleet. Some
have moved to Romania and appear on our programme ‘Romanian
Trams 2’. Our cameras travel on three trams
to visit different parts of the system.